20 years after the Cold War, Russian Ambassador to the U.S. says relations are still challenging

Russia’s Ambassador to the U.S. says two decades after the Cold War, relations between the two countries remain complex.

Sergey Kislyak discussed international relations during a forum Thursday night at UNO. Kislyak has served as Ambassador since 2008, and says the relationship between the U.S. and Russia has improved steadily over the past few years.

He says both nations are dealing with many of the same issues. “We have in common a lot of the biggest challenges that you face. Security challenges are the same, terrorism, inter-ethnic conflicts, inter-religious intolerance, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, narcotics, and one can continue, it’s a long list of problems.”

He says military tensions also remain, along with stereotypes created by the Cold War. Kislyak says the economic crisis that impacted the U.S. in 2008 also hurt Russia’s economy. But he says the country recovered from that, and Russia’s economy is becoming more diverse.